Vetlanda

Vetlanda lies in the wooded uplands of Småland in southern Sweden. It has a history as a market and judicial meeting place going back to the eleventh century. In the first half of the thirteenth century the church village was recorded as Hveteland, a name that place-name research associates with a wheat field. The parish and its meeting place served the surrounding farms, providing a focus for worship, exchange and the settlement of local affairs. The present town grew from several larger farms, but its formal urban status belongs to a much later period than the medieval and early modern countryside represented here.